Work on the new City Hall and Town Hall continues at a rapid pace as the construction team tries to make up for the many rain days that have slowed the schedule. These delays and a couple of unavoidable change orders have led to minor increases in the budget that are well below the project contingency, and the project completion date of May 2018 still seems attainable. If there are no further rain delays and concrete pouring for the deck above the parking garage can start in April, the project will be back on schedule. The city has hired a new consultant, Eitan Aharoni, AIA, as construction supervisor to bring daily oversight to the project. Eitan also has experience in supervising installation of solar panels on large public buildings and helped (in his first week of the job) preparing the grant application described below.

The City of Del Mar applied on March 6th for a California Energy Commission Local Government Challenge Grant to fund installation of a 66 kW photovoltaic solar panel array on the roof of the new City Hall and a Tesla 50 kW battery storage system to provide up to 5 hours of battery power for the Civic Center. This system will enable the onsite generation of up to 90% of the energy required for the Civic Center and will help the city avoid higher time-of-use charges anticipated for the early evening hours. The Center for Sustainable Energy helped provide technical information for the grant application, and will also provide performance monitoring and public outreach during the system’s first year of operation. The anticipated date when proposed award funding will be announced is April 11th, 2017, so let’s hope that Del Mar gets good news that day.

View of the construction site looking northwest from the corner of 10th Street and Camino Del Mar. The construction trailer is
visible at the top left of the photo. The eastern half of the parking garage floor, an area of almost 10,000 square feet, was completed in a massive one day pour involving 25 concrete trucks. The western half of the parking garage will gradually descend from 10th Street to the lower elevation of the eastern half,
which can be seen by the partial wall separating the
two halves in the center of the picture.
Photo Don Mosier.
Click to enlarge.